The Repaint Concept Thread

Steadfast

Steadfast

Freelancer
Citizen
Sabrblade said:
One could call it an "Aaron Archer era" thing.
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Ehhhh. Energon was kind of all over the
place with the Omnicons, Terrorcons, and futuristic everything. Then Cybertron had that four planets business, so, kind of?

Animated followed the Movie idea of Decepticons being generally bigger and tougher than Autobots, which overlapped with civilian vs. military somewhat.

I mean, it goes back to G1, with mostly cars vs., uh, not-cars, but then Scramble City happens and now Decepticons have cars and Autobots have jets and THERE ARE NO RULES ANYMORE!!!1!!one!!!eleventy!!

I guess the Beast Era played it stra- oh, hai Dinobot, thanks for messing up
our clear logical delineation and you know what? Forget it.
 
LordGigaIce

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
The idea of "civilian vs military" as a dynamic with Autobots and Decepticons was never really a thing in G1. I mean... it's kind of there in s1, but even then... what do construction vehicles, cassette tapes, tape decks, and cameras have to do with the military? And the Autobots had Hound.

By s2 you had Jetfire, Warpath, Powerglide, and the Aerialbots bringing the military flavour to the Autobots, and the Stunticons and Astrotrain bringing civilian vehicles to the Decepticons.

It was never a hard and fast rule.
 
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Haywire

Haywire

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NovaSaber said:
I think the 2007 movie was the only time it was true for literally every onscreen character with a vehicle mode. (If you include the toyline or video games, even it has exceptions.)
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I feel like this was an explicitly-stated design choice for the movie that I read or saw (maybe a bonus feature on the Dvd?) that was meant to suggest the Decepticons subverting authority.
 
CoffeeHorse

CoffeeHorse

Hanging in there
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Frenzy being absolutely surrounded by cop cars, and then he just slips into one of them and rides away, is one of the top "robots in disguise" moments. Imagine watching that movie for the first time, but you didn't already know who Barricade was because you hadn't spent the preceding year dissecting every piece of leaked concept art and toy test shots. It must have been awesome.
 
lastmaximal

lastmaximal

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I like little production choices like that, and they tend to do well for setting a tone for a line/series.

But I also really love when it breaks down because (more then than now) redecos and retools gotta exist to pad out the line, and especially with offscreen characters (which I miss with a fervor), there's more freedom for mixing and matching. Sometimes it's later waves, sometimes it's an entire side line. I might like this phase a bit more.
 
LordGigaIce

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
The movie line was probably the best at keeping the "Autobots as civilian vehicles, Decepticons as military vehicles" divide going. Evac and Whirl, Autobot repaints of Blackout, made a point of basing the decos off of rescue chopper designs, turning Blackout's military alt mode into two distinct search and rescue designs.

Even then though, it broke down. The '07 movie line was insanely popular and retailers demanded more. Which meant more repaints. Not just of the movie-specific moulds, but of UT moulds, and even Classics moulds on occasion. And the more they did that sort of thing, the more the "Autobots as civilian vehicles, Decepitons as military vehicles" divide felt like a suggestion rather than a rule.

Which I suppose it always was. It's a neat thematic idea, but Hasbro has never been married to it. They have always broken with it when they felt they needed to. And that makes sense. It's an arbitrary idea that needlessly restricts them. They're not going to adhere to it when ignoring it can let them churn out a few more repaints.
 
Donocropolis

Donocropolis

Olde-Timey Member
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I think the "Decepticons are MOSTLY military and Autobots are MOSTLY civilian" thing actually works well, fiction-wise. If you go with the Quintesson origin where the origins of the two factions were different product lines, it makes sense that, while the majority of Cybertronians stayed in the faction that they were built as part of, you would have a certain percentage that identify more with the opposite side and switch over at some point once hostilities broke out.

Even in continuities without the Quintessons, it's still easy enough to believe that not everyone's loyalties are determined completely by their body type.
 
NovaSaber

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
And the fact that FFoD ends with Rodimus offering to let Blitzwing join the Autobots kind of proves that (despite what I have seen some people say as a criticism of it) "strict correspondence between the product lines and the current factions" was never the intent of that part of the origin story.
The conflict only mostly coincides with ancestry for historical reasons.
 
LordGigaIce

LordGigaIce

Another babka?
Citizen
The idea of Autobots broadly being civilian vehicles and the Decepticons broadly being military hardware (with maybe a few outliers on each side for flavour) works with the Quintesson origin, but that's been almost universally rejected in favour of the Primus origin. And in the Aligned/IDW-centric canon, the two sides are akin to political movements that ultimately end up recruiting from broad sectors of Cybertronoan society.

TFO's decision to use the High Guard as the basis for the Decepticon movement actually goes some way to try and align the two, but TFO is never getting followed up on ever again so 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
It was always so weird that they modeled that toy's head and deco off of G1 Skids despite the obvious homage in the rest of the body.
 

Greebtron

Active member
Citizen
Sabrblade said:
@Greebtron You're our expert on this kind production info. You got any thoughts on this supposition?
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That Cyclonus was to have his Armada, same as Scourge and the Sweeps, was intended for the movie but didn't make it past his creation scene. All five scripts of FFOD have been available for a few years now, and Flint makes no mention of the Armada in these scenes. Nor of the Constructicons in part 4 for that matter. It was just AKOM haphazardly grabbing whatever character models were to hand.
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Greebtron said:
That Cyclonus was to have his Armada, same as Scourge and the Sweeps, was intended for the movie but didn't make it past his creation scene. All five scripts of FFOD have been available for a few years now, and Flint makes no mention of the Armada in these scenes. Nor of the Constructicons in part 4 for that matter. It was just AKOM haphazardly grabbing whatever character models were to hand.
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Well, @Steadfast, there's the answer to your wondering. ;)
 
Steadfast

Steadfast

Freelancer
Citizen
Sabrblade said:
Well, @Steadfast, there's the answer to your wondering. ;)
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Then I stand corrected. It still doesn't make sense- Unicron *says* "and his armada." Not "your new best pal" or "and his brother Hurricanicus" or "and A NEW CAR!!!"

But I guess there's a lot about The Greatsest Cinematic Masterpiece OF ALL TIME!!! that doesn't make sense.

I am curious about the timeline of The Movie's script progression/production vs. Five Faces of Darkness's, but that's probably on the Wiki or easy enough to piece together with minimal effort I don't want to spend now.

(Clearly 5FoD was well into production when the Movie aired, and IIRC it gets Optimus's last words wrong, so there was at least some tweaking in the meantime.)
 
Sabrblade

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Steadfast said:
Then I stand corrected. It still doesn't make sense- Unicron *says* "and his armada." Not "your new best pal" or "and his brother Hurricanicus" or "and A NEW CAR!!!"
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Clearly they forgot to cut that part of Orson Welles's line and correct the animation of Cyclonus's creation scene when the concept of "the Armada" was dropped.
 
Steadfast

Steadfast

Freelancer
Citizen
Setting aside the armada business for a second- the Constructicons not being called out is basically what I assumed-- animation error, not a writing one.

It's nice to have confirmation, though, because I wouldn't've wanted to bet money on it.
 
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